March Updates & Service Changes

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Lots to talk about in this update, where there are service changes that we have already talked about, some that we haven’t and a round up of some of the transport news around the area.

PlusBus

First a thank you to Rob who has bought me a pint coffee from the BuyMeACoffee link that I forgot I put on the site sidebar. Thanks for that, I will admit I used it for a nice pint of Theakston Best Bitter in Gosport’s Erasmus Wolfe bar! Rob had pointed out that the price of the Fareham & Gosport PlusBus has increased from £3 to £5.45 – if you are coming in from outside the area by train then prepare for the eye watering price increase.

A quick email to the PlusBus team at Traveline reveals what I thought; the price was noted not to have increased for a long time and the Fares Setting Round on 01 March changed that. Portsmouth & Southsea have not escaped either, with a rise from £3.30 to £4.60

As a quick summary of some of the local PlusBus fares – for a one day adult ticket:

• Southampton £2.90
• Bournemouth & Poole £4.80
• Winchester £4
• Andover £4

For those that have not heard of the PlusBus before, if you are travelling into an area by train, then there is often an add-on ticket available for travelling on buses through a town or area. In most cases, as you can see above, the price of this ticket is much less than the cost of many return tickets from the railway station to your final destination.

I will still be buying a Fareham & Gosport PlusBus…. In fact I did this morning to get to the Erasmus Wolfe.

News

While I am still working on building a reliable aggregator of local news stories, there are a few articles across the local press that have caught my eye.

Firstly to the Isle of Wight where Southern Vectis have started operation of their brand new electric buses. the Go South Coast brand published some video footage to their Facebook page last week. There are currently 22 Wright Street deck Electroliners vehicles plying their trade on the Island and at the time of writing they are largely out of the 5, 8 and 9.

Southern Vectis also announced last week that a further 23 vehicles are now also planned, including for the Needles Breezer.

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Also for those in the Portsmouth area, a reminder that railway lines on Portsea Island will be closed for the first week of the school Easter Holidays from 28th March to 2nd April. This is in preparation for the current Havant Area Signaling Centre to transfer it’s control of the area to a the Regional Operations Centre a Basingstoke at a later date.

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From Chandlers Ford, there is a report in the Southern Daily Echo that funding has been secured to support a minibus service. This minibus will link Valley Park with Chandler’s Ford and Eastleigh as a partial replacement to the now cancelled Stagecoach South 46 service.

I am sure readers will already know that the 46 was withdrawn following Hampshire County Council’s hacksaw to funding across the county.

The support is or two years to start with, in a use it / lose it situation.

Service Changes

We have already spoken about some of the changes coming up to First Solent during and after the school Easter Holidays. It will be coincidental that not long after I posted last week about how I am getting on filtering and developing PDF copies of timetables; First Solent’s news article on service changes went live:

• From Saturday 28th March – and additional weekday trip will run on Hovertravel supported H1, connecting the City Centre to the Hovertravel terminal. This will connect with an additional Hovertravel flight to and from Ryde.
• From Monday 6th April – The H1 will run to a half-hourly weekday timetable, coinciding ith the Hovertravel summer flight uplift

• From Sunday 12th April – Service 2 (Paulsgrove – Eastney – Southsea – The Hard) will reduce from every 10 minutes to every 12 minutes on weekday daytimes. Unfortunately the First Solent link to the new timetable leads you to the H1 timetable for 28th March.
  
  My version is still not quite right, but you get the idea.
  
• From Sunday 12th April, as we talked about last week, the X4 and X5 will both go hourly.

Bluestar

There appears to be some service changes that are use to also take affect on Sunday 12th April across Southampton:

• Bluestar 3 (Southampton – Bitterne – Hedge End – Eastleigh) has a minor extension to the last weekday trip from Eastleigh to Hedge End
• Bluestar 8 (Southampton – Hythe Pier) is listed as a route and timetable change. From what I understand of the timetable, I think it will now run (without stopping) via Jacobs Gutter Lane and Marchwood Road rather than the Marchwood ByPass and Pooksgreen. I do not know the area well enough to be sure though.
• 9 (Southampton – Hythe – Langley & Calshot) sees minor timing changes
• Bluestar 11 & 12 (Southampton – Totton – Calmore / West Totton) have what appears to be minor timetable changes
• Service 28 (Southampton – Chilworth Science Park) mostly a few minutes additional running time, although the 1740 from the Science Par will now depart at 1750
• Now…. I am not convinced I have this right…. The H1&H2 will now run Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday and the T3&T4 will run Wednesday/Thursday?
• QuayConnect has minor timing changes, presumably to better match the Red Funnel sailing times.